Hilarious. 17 identical shots.   what?

Might I ask, what led you to search on "Baby Frog Outfit"?

Hilarious. 17 identical shots.   what?

Might I ask, what led you to search on "Baby Frog Outfit"?

just look at "Latest additions", i.e. http://www.dreamstime.com/latest-photos_pg6 , starting from picture http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-baby-in-a-frog-outfit-image17349430 and older...

Usually Dreamstime would reject 90% of such pictures for "too many similar", but in this case the whole batch passed through...

Thank goodness you posted that search.  I almost want to open an account just to buy this funny cat image...

ROFL to your whole post!!

I have some credits at DT.  If you want the kitten pic, let me know.  It will be my Christmas gift to you

Thank goodness you posted that search.  I almost want to open an account just to buy this funny cat image...

Go to Barnes and Noble...they have it on a kitchen magnet.   

As a childless adult, I am unable to meaningfully distinguish those 17 'frog baby' pictures. My mind can't detect such fine differences in 'cuteness', they are all off the scale.   

But obviously the reviewer at DT saw these shots as a rainbow of variety.

Thank goodness you posted that search.  I almost want to open an account just to buy this funny cat image...

I had you down for the Chihuahua 

@stockastic

I just looked at the latest additions page, although it's easy to find lots of examples of near identical set of images on Dreamstime that any normal person would be deem to be similar. The last time I got a 'similar' rejection on Dreamstime I appealed, which then goes back to the reviewer, their reply showed they have absolutely no idea about stock, one of the images they rejected has sold 396 times on iStock alone - in just six months.

I like Dreamstime a lot but I get infuriated by my work being rejected by someone who doesn't know the industry, I noticed the other day one of the reviewers there has had less downloads from their portfolio in five years than I get in a week (with a portfolio a third bigger than mine), how can someone like that possibly give advice on what will and won't sell?
I can take technical rejections (when justified) and I even don't mind some rejections from sites that say they're not after a certain type of image but it annoys me to have my work judged by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about.

The frog kitten has been on greeting cards in drugstores all over the US for years, and has inspired hundreds if not thousands of microstock 'derivations'. But there is still only one real frog kitten, my all-time favorite microstock image..

Just to be clear, the frog cat is a great shot, and I've nothing against the baby either (apart from there's too many) I was just using it as an example of the Dreamstime reviewing standards on similarity.

About one year ago, FT had a similar policy for a short time rejecting everything barely related. Well, since they renounced to that nonsense sales at FT are increasing again.

I hope DT will realise as well - meanwhile I am only uploading a few pictures now and then.

I am doing mainly architectural photography and a frontal or perspective or wide angle or detail picture of a building are not the same thing to me - but they don't seem to understand, so I can only upload one picture of every building.

They even refused the first picture of Glasgow cathedral I uploaded because "too similar"! Too similar to what? To my pictures of Westminster Abbey or Koelner Dom or Duomo di Milano, I guess. Yes they are all gothic but different towns and countries. Different buyers may well be interested in one or another, or not? Or they must all buy the first one I uploaded?

I must say that I think DT is sometimes pretty far off the mark with their similars rejections... I had a bunch of similar yet different objects and after getting a few rejections I stopped uploading them, but I left one in the queue and they accepted that one and an older one sold. How do they tell that something is too similar to something that has been uploaded before? Sometimes their search returns row after row of near identical images though - seems they ought to fix that in search or have some way to have the artist stack similars behind one image instead of just rejecting a vertical image when a horizontal one has been accepted of the same landscape.

I also think that getting people to stick a heap of images together into one is a bad idea (at least for the photographers). They also often look horrible as thumbs.

As far as their levels system, it is somewhat advantageous not to have similars though, especially as level one images only pay 30% of the cheapest price.

Yes, It is getting ridiculous. Dreamstime was one of the first Microstock companies and due to their lousy and unprofessional inspection process they manage to fall faaaar down the line for me. Now they are after Canstock and Veer despite over 6000 images online.

As a BUYER: this whole duplicate thing is complete nonsense. I download per month arround 150 Images and I can assure you that Designers love duplicates!

I give you one example:
Last week I was looking for a typical Microstock Image. It was for an print Publication and promoting the Customers Website (Something like: "Visit our page too!"). So I searched for a couple smiling in front of a Laptop. Now you may think there are enough Images of that, but no, not on DT. They have to be a certain age and a certain environment. Fastly I found something suitable and downloaded it. But the angle was not right and didn`t leave enough space for the assigned text. Off course you can Photoshop this arround, but time is money and before I struggle around half an hour in PS I looked if there are other Images from the same series with a different angle. Answer: no. I left Dreamstime and went to another page (Canstock) and found it.

Dreamstime has NO Idea what to accept or not. And today I  noticed a ridiculous upload limit inspite of a very high acceptance rate.

I may stop uploading there.

I'd say it would be a good idea to collectively remind Dreamstime that their insistent requests on creating image sets are completely illegitimate. As copyright owners, we have exclusive rights to decide in which form to sell our intellectual property.

BTW, a new rejection gem just emerged: "Please submit several/all images from this series as a single file (image)."

That's a really excellent point.

Isn't it also the case that iStock insist on the opposite, as they want the images separated in order to generate more sales?  I seem to recall someone saying that here at some point. 

I had done a studio set of images on a poker theme showing different hands etc. Specifically I had a shot of a model hand holding five cards revealing a royal flush and another shot of the model's hand holding 4 aces and a king. That shot was rejected as being too similar. I appealed and pointed out that a royal flush was not the same as 4 aces literally or in conceptual terms and they reversed the rejection.

Sort of demonstrates the lack of experience the editors have. I have since stopped appealing such rejections because you could make a full time job out of it. Too bad really. I have commented on the site many times about the value of having variations on a theme. They just don't get it.